


The Other Side of the Wall

by AstroGirl



Category: Farscape
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, F/M, Het
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-10
Updated: 2009-12-10
Packaged: 2017-10-04 08:01:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AstroGirl/pseuds/AstroGirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stark likes to watch.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Other Side of the Wall

**Author's Note:**

> A 3rd season AU, set sometime after "Relativity" and before "Infinite Possibilities." Rated "mature" for sexual content. Written for the Stark ficathon.

Stark likes to listen. He loves the moist noises, the low moans, the soft sound of skin sliding over skin. He loves listening to _her_.

Crichton once, in his strange, offhand way, mentioned a phrase his people use to describe orgasm: "the little death." Stark likes the phrase. When he listens to Aeryn gasping and crying out her release, he can almost imagine that her soul is open to him, that it seeks his touch as if bound for the other side. Sometimes he can almost feel her.

John and Aeryn make love now every chance they get. And every chance he gets, Stark puts his ear to the wall and loses himself in vicarious joy and the fantasy of being touched by something other than literal death, of intimacy with someone who will still be there when the moment of joining is over.

He likes to watch them, too. They try to be discreet -- well, sometimes -- but they are drawn to each other like magnets. A kiss, a touch, sometimes an intimate caress, when they don't believe anyone can see, or simply don't care. Sometimes he imagines himself as Crichton, imagines her hands, her lips, are touching _him_. Sometimes he is filled with envy. Sometimes, he simply finds them beautiful.

**

Then, one day, instead of watching them love, he watches them fight. About him.

"All I'm sayin' is, it's creepy. He's always _looking_ at us. At you."

"He's harmless."

They don't know he's here. It's a slave's skill, to fade into the background, when being noticed might bring a master's wrath.

"Yeah, OK, probably. But he's _creepy_. I don't like it."

"We owe him, John. _I_... I owe him. If it weren't for me, _his_ lover would still be alive. Or had you forgotten?"

"Of course I hadn't _forgotten_..."

Neither has Stark. Never for a moment. But he doesn't blame her. Never blamed her. But it's kind of her to think of him. Compassionate. So very like Zhaan...

"Well, then."

"So. You owe him." Crichton's thumb rubs at his mouth. "That's why you let him touch you?"

"What?"

"Last night. At dinner. When he passed you the grolak. Did you think I didn't notice?"

Stark had thought so.

"So he touched my hand a few microts longer than strictly necessary. He's lonely, John. I would think you would understand that."

"Understand. Yeah, I understand. The guy's got a jones for you the size of the Empire State Building, and you're doing nothing to discourage him!"

"This conversation is over."

"Look, Aeryn, honey, I'm just saying..."

"This. Conversation. Is. Over."

There's a long, long pause as they look at each other. Inside Stark's veil of protective quiet, his heart wails, because, yes, Zhaan died for her, for them, for _this_, and they're not supposed to fight; they're supposed to love, or what was it for?

"Fine," says John. "Fine." And his footsteps echo down the corridor.

Stark whimpers.

"You can come out now." Aeryn's voice, at once angry and calm. "I know you're there."

He stands up from behind the table, his hands fluttering before him. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I didn't... I'm sorry."

"It's all right, Stark."

"No it isn't. It isn't, it--"

"It _is_. You didn't do anything wrong." She glances in the direction Crichton has gone. Her voice is taut and hard. "He doesn't own me."

"No! Oh, no, no, no, _no_." Stark knows what it is to be owned, and the thought of Aeryn's beauty in slave's fetters makes him tremble with anguish. Aeryn will be no one's slave, not even Crichton's. He would give his life to prevent it.

She pays little attention to his reaction. "His culture has the most insane ideas about mating. Do you know that the wedding ceremony on his world includes a promise for the female to obey? _Obey_! All right, he _says_ it's archaic, but, still..."

"That isn't right," says Stark quietly. "Not right." He reaches out for her, desperate in his desire to comfort.

She starts to say something; starts, he thinks, to pull away, but at the sound of approaching footsteps, she stills.

"Frell," she says. "He can't just leave it alone, can he?" Her voice, edgy and cold, is that of a soldier preparing a final assault against an enemy too stupid to know when to surrender.

Stark opens his mouth to respond, but unexpected lips snatch the words from him, along with the breath. Aeryn is kissing him.

Aeryn is _kissing_ him.

There's some reaction from Crichton, the sound of footsteps receding, but Stark is barely aware of it, because Aeryn is kissing him. She tastes just as he imagined her, feels just as good in his arms, so like Zhaan and yet so different.

She moves to pull away, but he clings to her, needing more. The incorporeal part of him reaches out and brushes lightly against the field of her life's energy, gentle golden ripples caressing her in dimensions only he can see. She is beautiful in this realm, too, her water-clear Sebacean life-essence shot through with wisps of Delvian blue that dissolve like smoke under his touch.

"Frell!" she says again, breaking the kiss, and at first he thinks she's angry with him, begins to stammer out an apology. But the look on her face is wonder and pleasure. "What _was_ that?"

"That was me," he says. "Touching you." He makes a gesture at his mask.

She looks at him for a moment, biting her lip, glancing down the corridor after Crichton. "Could you... Could you do it again?"

He can. He does. And it pleases her.

**

"You do realize," she says later, as he's taking off her shirt, "that I'm doing this partly to prove a point to John? That it means nothing? That it's just recreation?"

He nods, scarcely hearing, and she permits him to touch her.

He watches her face when she comes, and gently cradles her soul.

**

It doesn't surprise him when Crichton seizes him and throws him against the wall. Part of him even believes he deserves it. What right has Stark ever had to happiness? Especially happiness stolen from another, even if it was stolen from him first.

"You little _shit_!"

John's hands circle his neck and shake. He tries to stammer out an apology, an explanation, something, but the words won't come, perhaps because of the hands at his throat, perhaps because he can't quite find it in him to apologize for accepting the only tenderness anyone's shown him since Zhaan. Or perhaps he's simply afraid, because in another microt those hands might tighten, and he knows what it feels like to die of oxygen starvation. He knows what it feels like to die of everything.

His lips move, forming the words of a chanted prayer and suddenly, as if in answer, an arm seizes Crichton from behind, pulls him from Stark, and tosses him across the room.

Aeryn looks at him. "Are you all right?"

He nods. Then he flees.

**

There's a tap on the door to his quarters. When he doesn't answer, it opens, slowly.

"May I come in?" It's Aeryn's voice, serious and low. He doesn't look at her, but he finishes mouthing the words of the chant he's been repeating for -- how long now? arns? -- and nods.

She enters quietly and sits down on his bed, still unmade and fresh with the memories of last night's... recreation. It's a long moment before she speaks.

"I owe you an apology." She doesn't. Not for bringing him beauty and joy, not for making him feel the way he felt. He never expected it to last. "I... used you. You deserved better."

"When you've been a slave," he says, his words coming from somewhere that seems very far outside himself, "you learn to appreciate what you can get. It's never about what you deserve." He turns to look at her at last.

"I'm so sorry." She swallows, fighting tears, and he wants to reach out, to... he doesn't know. To do _something_. "It isn't like this for Peacekeepers. It's simple. It's _sex_. There aren't all these frelling _emotions_. All these stupid, tangled..." She stops, takes a breath, starts again. "I hurt John. Very badly. I think I meant to hurt him, but not... not like that. And I hurt you. And I'm very, very sorry." She grips the edge of the bed, her knuckles white. "I can't undo it. But it isn't going to happen again. I need you to understand that."

He reaches out his hand and touches her hair. Beautiful, beautiful hair, framing the sadness on her face. He wants to hide his own face in it, and forget.

But her voice comes between them, hard and real. "Do you understand that, Stark?"

"Yes," he says. "I understand." And he does. Nothing is ever his to keep. "Crichton loves you," he says, because it has to be true.

"Yes." She swipes at her eyes, looking embarrassed by the necessity. "Yes, he does. The idiot."

"Love is a beautiful thing."

She pats his face as she rises to leave. The feeling of her touch lingers, even when he buries his face in the Aeryn-scented pillow and vainly wishes it away.

**

He tries to go back to watching, but it's never quite the same. Memory clashes with reality, reality with fantasy. Crichton tenses in his presence, and Aeryn's eyes, when they rest on him, are sad.

**

He doesn't leave a note when he goes. It's better this way.

Beautiful things are beautiful, even when you're not watching them.


End file.
